


Bring Us Back

by wowbright



Series: Glee Season 5 episode reactions [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: Episode: s05e02 Tina in the Sky with Diamonds, Episode: s05e03 The Quarterback, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowbright/pseuds/wowbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5.02 reaction fic, part of which takes place in 5.03. <a href="http://juliette06.tumblr.com/">juliette06</a> asked for “Blaine calling Kurt and telling him about Tina/reminiscing about their prom/etc.” <a href="http://rosencarousel.tumblr.com">rosencarousel</a> asked for Kurt and Tina having a conversation to discuss McKinley’s prom court treatment. It turned into a story about repairing relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring Us Back

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks [Jamie](http://likearumchocolatesouffle.tumblr.com) for betaing!

Kurt doesn’t call Blaine until well after midnight. Prom is one of Blaine’s last hurrahs with all his New Directions friends, and Kurt doesn’t want to interrupt it. Besides, putting off the phone call gives him a good chunk of time to finish his homework before he starts at the Starlight Diner tomorrow.

The clock on his phone flashes “1:32 a.m.” when Kurt finally wakes it from sleep. He wonders if Blaine is home alone by now.

“You won’t believe what happened tonight,” Blaine says when he answers the phone.

Kurt bounces on the bed. “You got prom king?! Congratulations!”

There’s a long pause before Blaine speaks. “Um, not exactly.”

[[MORE]]Kurt feels like his spine is turning into chunks of ice, one vertebra at a time. “Wait. They didn’t vote you in as prom _queen_ , did they?”

“No, nothing like that. I mean, I didn’t get on the prom court at all.”

“Oh,” Kurt says. “I’m sorry to hear that. I wish you had. And that I had been there to watch you get crowned.”

Another long pause. “Actually, I’m kind of glad you weren’t there. Things got … bad.”

The cold spreads down further until Kurt’s thighbones feel like icicles. “Please – please tell me it wasn’t like your first Sadie Hawkins.” Kurt curses himself for telling Blaine to go ahead and dance with other guys.

“No, nothing bad happened to me. It was –” Blaine is interrupted by a voice in the background. It doesn’t take long for Kurt to figure out who it is, because the voice keeps addressing Blaine as _Boo_ and Blaine responds with, “Anything you want, Tay-tay. It’s your night,” before turning back to the phone with, “Sorry about that, Kurt.”

“Tina’s with you?”

“Uh-huh,” Blaine answers distractedly.

“She’s not sleeping over, is she?”

“No. A bunch of us are over at Tina’s house to change before going to IHOP.”

 _I guess that’s OK as long as other people are there,_ Kurt wants to say, but he doesn’t. He’s already made his disapproval of Tina known to Blaine, and it hasn’t had any effect. Blaine keeps insisting on making his own mistakes.

“OK,” Kurt says. “So what happened at prom? Tina didn’t get prom queen?” It would be like Blaine to take on Tina’s disappointment as his own, and for that disappointment to overshadow the rest of the evening.

“Um, actually, she did. But then she got slushied on stage. A whole bucketful.”

Kurt’s immediately transported to another time and place, looking out from that stage at the silent crowd filling the gym, the sting of their disdain like ice against his skin. It was a singular sort of suffering, all the more painful because he was alone in it. “Oh, Tina,” he whispers almost inaudibly. Then, “Is she okay?”

“She’s good now. We dealt with it. The girls cleaned her up and Kitty gave Tina her dress to wear and she got back on stage and thanked everyone who voted for her. It ended up kind of awesome, actually.” He pauses for a long while. Kurt can hear chatter in the background, and the high-pitched laughter of girls. It fades, and Kurt hears something like a door closing, and then silence. He hears Blaine sniffle then.

“Blaine.” Kurt whispers his name like a prayer, if Kurt were inclined to pray. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I will be,” Blaine says in a choked off voice. “It just brought everything back from our first prom and how I didn’t know what to do to make anything better, and I wish … She was so freaked out and she was just going to go home by herself and I could see it in her eyes, ready to give up, all the light was going out of them and, and –” Blaine’s breath shudders. “It was horrible, Kurt.”

Kurt wishes he could hold Blaine. Instead, he says, “I’m here.”

“And I remembered what you said that night, that if you left the prom it was just going to haunt you. So I asked her to think about staying – I mean of course if she still wanted to leave we would leave, but –” Blaine sucks in a ragged breath. “I knew how to help her tonight, Kurt, but I didn’t know how to help you back then. I hate that.”

“Oh, honey.” The ice in Kurt’s body thaws into water that starts to leak from his eyes. “You helped me so much, though.”

“Maybe. But I did better this time, and it’s not fair. The only reason I knew what to do for her was because you’ve been there before. I hate that going through horrible things can make us better people because it’s like, it’s like – It’s like it justifies all the wrong things people do to each other. I _hate_ it.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I hate it, too. But I’m proud of you. I’m proud of you for being there for me, even when you don’t know how, and I’m proud of you for being there for Tina. You’re a brave man, Blaine.”

Blaine hiccups. “You don’t even like Tina.”

“I know,” Kurt says. “But you do, and that’s what matters to me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Blaine.”

“I don’t want anyone to ever hurt you again. _I_ don’t ever want to hurt you again.”

Kurt doesn’t know what to say for a moment. He doesn’t like talking about that – they’ve talked about it so much, and Blaine’s said sorry a million times, and there’s so little left to say. Blaine sees himself as a perpetrator and a sinner, and Kurt’s tried to remind him that the situation could just as easily have been reversed, that Kurt has made stupid, perilous mistakes in the past and he’ll probably make more in the future. But Blaine keeps carrying it around like a pebble rubbing against his heart.

“Blaine,” he finally says. “People will hurt us sometimes. And we’ll hurt each other sometimes. But the love you give me makes everything so much easier to get through. I wish I could make you know how loved and safe you make me feel.”

“Kurt. You have no idea how much I want to be that for you.”

“Actually, I think I do. You know, what with you asking me to marry you and all.”

Blaine’s laughter is audible over the phone line, and easily distinguishable from his tears. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I hope I can learn to be a good husband to you.”

Kurt smiles. “Oh, sweetie. You already are.”

* * *

The week of Finn’s memorial, the New Directions are gathered in Ryder’s backyard for the world’s most depressing barbeque. Kurt doesn’t want to hear people talk about Finn anymore; when the younger New Directions tell stories about him, it sounds like they’re talking about a stranger. It’s disconcerting. He doesn’t know whether to yell at them for not knowing the real Finn, or to feel jealous that they saw a side of Finn that he never did.

Tina is sitting on a bench near the fire, staring blankly into it. The look on her face reminds Kurt of one she wore often back in her Goth days: disappointed by the world, but lost without it. He taps her on the shoulder and she startles.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says.

She frowns. “Why? You don’t like me.”

Kurt shrugs. “I like you some days better than others. Anyway, you look like you want to be here about as much as I do.”

Tina stands up. “Anything’s better than this. I keep thinking I can’t cry anymore, and then – Well, I’m sure you know what that’s like.”

They walk out the back gate and down the dusky side street. The neighbors’ gardens are bursting with flowers; even in the growing dark, the magnolia blossoms stand on their branches like pale flames on a candelabra, and the lilacs drench the air with their heady scent. Kurt resents the world for being so alive when Finn isn’t in it.

“So,” Tina starts. “Did you want to talk? Or just be glum together?”

Kurt looks up. “I know I’ve been distant lately.”

“Kurt,” Tina gives him a withering look. “You’ve always been distant.”

“You know what I mean. We used to be friends.”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “But then I tried to steal your boyfriend.”

“Well, he wasn’t technically my boyfriend –”

“Don’t give me that crap. You were still in love with each other.”

Kurt can’t argue with that. “It was dumb of me, anyway. I shouldn’t have been so jealous.”

“Well, duh. He’s gay.” Tina sighs. “But I shouldn’t have been such an asshole about it, either. Maybe I went over the line lecturing you at Schue’s wedding. And texting you pointers on how to treat him – that probably wasn’t called for, either.”

“You think?”

She shrugs. “And you were right. The VapoRub thing was creepy. Even if Blaine said it was okay after the fact – well, he’s kind of a pushover. That doesn’t mean I should have done it.”

Kurt has the urge to say, _I’m glad to hear you’ve come around on that,_ but he doesn’t know how to say it without sounding snide, so he doesn’t. “Tina, you’re one of his best friends. I’m going to marry him. I want you and me to be okay.”

She stops walking and turns to face him. He stops walking, too. “We’re okay,” she says. “Look, we’ve both been a little jerky to each other, but I still love you. You’re … part of my family, Kurt.”

Kurt has no idea what to say to that. He could tell her he loves her, too, because technically it would be true; but he doesn’t remember the last time he told Finn he loved him, and he loved Finn a lot more. So he can’t say it. Not today.

“Look,” she says, reaching out her hand. “Can we hold hands or link arms or something? I promise not to turn into your hag.”

He’s so surprised by the request that he doesn’t know how to respond except with the truth. “It’s hard to let people touch me right now.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m not trying to make you feel better about Finn, if that makes any difference. I just miss being your friend. But it’s up to you.”

He looks at her hesitantly, then down at the sidewalk. The cracks in it look deeper in the shadowy light of the streetlamps. He starts walking again and she keeps up alongside of him. Wordlessly, he holds out his elbow. She wraps her hand around it but doesn’t cling.

It feels all right.

They don’t say anything for a few blocks. They should probably turn around soon, Kurt thinks. He has no idea where they are. But there’s nothing threatening about it. Just more generic suburban houses, generic suburban lawns, generic suburban gardens springing to life.

“When I got prom queen, I thought I’d finally gotten the recognition I’d always wanted. I thought maybe I wasn’t just the invisible Asian girl anymore. Sit down and be quiet, get good grades, be dutiful and obedient and, above all, blend in. I thought people actually saw me for once.”

“Blaine sees you,” Kurt says.

“I know,” she pauses. “That’s why I fell for him.”

 _Yes,_ Kurt thinks. _That’s why I did, too. He saw me._

“And then the slushie happened, and _of course_ that’s what happened, because that’s what McKinley does when you step out of your place. I saw them do that to you a million times. I felt so _stupid_ for thinking it could be different with me.”

“You weren’t stupid. It’s not stupid to hope that people are good.”

She shrugs. “Blaine was perfect. He calmed me down and he got the New Directions behind me and … When the girls were helping me clean up, everything felt so quiet and peaceful and I felt _loved_ for the first time in, well, a while. And I kept thinking about how Blaine probably wouldn’t have known how to help me if he hadn’t been with you when you got prom queen. You showed him how to turn defeat into victory. And then when we went back to the gym – I was totally panicking inside, but I just kept thinking, ‘What would Kurt Hummel do?’ and I walked up onto that stage and I accepted the crown with my dignity intact.”

“I’m glad,” Kurt says. “You’ve always struck me as a dignified woman if nothing else, Tina Cohen-Chang. No one should take that away from you.”

She sighs. “I think we have more in common than we sometimes think, Kurt.”

“We’re both stubborn mules who love Blaine?”

“For starters.”

He reaches across his body to lay his hand on top of the one she has crooked around his elbow. “I think,” he says, “that’s a very good place for us to start.”


End file.
